Minecraft Farming Guide
For anybody that has played survival on Minecraft, you know just how vital farming is to your gameplay. Without farming, you would have to constantly be looking for food around the world in order to keep your hunger bar up. An empty hunger bar means your health with decrease until you die! However, we can avoid this by growing food of our own and Minecraft has implemented many ways of doing just that. In this guide, you will learn everything you need to know about farming in Minecraft.
Getting Started – Finding Seeds
The first step to setting up your farm is finding something to grow in it. There are many different types of seeds that can be grown to produce food, you can find some of these by destroying grass that is growing out of grass blocks.
To grow potatoes and carrots you will find the seeds either in villages spread throughout your world or as a rare drop from killing zombies.
You may also find seeds such as pumpkin or melon inside chests stashed in dungeons and mineshafts. Seeds can also be bought from some villagers if you have the item they are wanting for them.
Building a Farm
There are many things that your plants will need to grow successfully. These are:
- A close water source.
- Soil that has been tilled using a Hoe.
- Light source if inside (Torches, Glowstone etc).
- The correct soil type for your seeds. (Sand for Bamboo, Dirt for Wheat etc).
Now you will have to create a farm ensuring you have these items.
There are many ways in which you can build an efficient farm. One block of water covers a 9×9 area, this means you could place a single block of water in the middle of your plants and it would provide enough for them to grow. You can tell a seed is getting water by the colour underneath it, without water it will stay the default light-brown soil colour and once a water source hits it, it will turn a darker shade of brown.
The most common method for building farms is to dig out a strip of land, fill it with flowing water and place seeds on either side of the strip. This allows you to make a clean and tidy looking farm.
If your farm is underground, you must ensure that you have enough light surrounding the seeds for them to grow. It is also useful to place light around plants outside as they will continue to grow during the night. You can do this by placing down torches or glowstone close to them.
Each plant has its own speed of growing. The typical time for these is between 10 to 30 minutes, though you can speed the process for some seeds up by right-clicking them with bonemeal in your hand, this should cause the plant to grow almost instantly.
Setting up the Soil for Your Seeds
Before you can plant your gathered seeds in the soil, you need to prepare it. Seeds will only plant in soil that has been tilled, to do this you will have to craft a Hoe. This is an easily crafted tool and can be made from basic materials such as cobblestone and sticks. Start by placing 2 of your chosen material in a crafting table, one in the top-right corner and one in the top-middle slot. Place one stick under the top-middle material and then a second stick underneath the first one. This should produce a Hoe. They can be made from any basic material from wood all the way up to diamond.
Once you have crafted a Hoe, take it in your hands and right-click on the block of grass where you will be planting the seeds. This should cause the soil to look stripped and remove grass if there was any on it.
You can now plant your seeds by holding them in your hand and right-clicking the tilled soil. Watch out though, as if you jump or run on a tilled plot of land empty for too long, it will become an untilled plot again, this also happens if a tilled plot is left empty for too long!
As time passes, you will notice the different stages of growth. At first, you will only see a little of the plant, usually some small leaves poking out the top, over time it will increase. When ready to harvest the crop will be large and usually darker in colour.
With crops such as bamboo and wheat, once you have collected them they will usually continue to grow for another couple of cycles. However, there are some crops that will disappear once harvested, so make sure you keep some spare seeds on hand.